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I'm running Firefox 61.0.1. I wanted to test 62.0 Beta, so I went to https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/channel/desktop/#beta, clicked Download and ran "Firefox Installer.exe". The installer ran for a short time, but did not display any options. Then it showed a message that Firefox is running and asked me to exit Firefox so it could upgrade.

I do not want to replace Firefox 61.0.1. I want to install 62.0 Beta alongside 61.0.1. I believe that as soon as I exit Firefox 61.0.1, it will be uninstalled. I need to prevent that from happening.

How can I cancel/kill the pending upgrade?

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  • You could close you current windows session.
    – Core972
    Commented Aug 6, 2018 at 5:40
  • I have found that restarting windows invites any pending updates to take place. If a file is in use when installing updates, the OS keeps a record of what it wanted to do to that file, then does it on the next restart. Remember the "Restart your PC to finish installing updates" message. So I'm skeptical of this suggestion.
    – Roofus
    Commented Aug 9, 2018 at 22:54

3 Answers 3

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I believe that as soon as I exit Firefox 61.0.1, it will be uninstalled.

No, it won't. The installation of the beta version was aborted and nothing was changed.

I want to install 62.0 Beta alongside 61.0.1

In order to do that you need to install the newer version in a different folder/drive. If you don't explicitly change it the installer will default to the default Firefox installation folder.

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  • Thanks for your post. As I said in the question, I expected the installer to display an option for where to install, but it didn't.
    – Roofus
    Commented Aug 9, 2018 at 23:08
  • I have exited 61.0.1 and it was not replaced, as you said, so I'll accept your answer. But I think it may be because I had 32-bit 61.0.1 and the 62.0 Beta that was downloaded is 64-bit, so they are in different folders anyway. If I'd been running 64-bit 61.0.1, the install folder would have been the same, and then I think 62.0 Beta would have been installed over the top.
    – Roofus
    Commented Aug 9, 2018 at 23:11
  • For the benefit of future readers, if you download a "Firefox Installer.exe" from eg. mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/channel/desktop/#beta (where I got the Beta installer), it is a stub which will check your machine, automatically download the version it deems best for you, and install it in the default location. If you want to choose a specific Firefox version or change the install location, this is considered a "custom install" and you should read support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/….
    – Roofus
    Commented Aug 9, 2018 at 23:22
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You can delete the temporary application data folder for Firefox. eg. C:\Users\your-username-here\AppData\Local\Mozilla\Firefox\Mozilla Firefox or in my case: %localappdata%\Mozilla\updates\FE9E855F617E73E6 Delete the folder called “updates” and two files “active-update.xml” and “updates.xml”

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  • +1 for this answer. Location I see is slightly different but the concept is helpful. FWIW, my location was C:\ProgramData\Mozilla\updates\ and under that another temporary folder which contained the updates folder.
    – LMSingh
    Commented Feb 12, 2021 at 20:00
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I'm quite experienced in running Firefox and Firefox beta side-by-side with different profiles. The trick is to make sure you don't download the installer 'stub' which is about 300kb in size and does everything automatically without offering any options.

You need to make sure you always download the full installer from the 'All languages and platforms' section of the regular/beta download pages. When you do this, you'll get the 'full' installer that doesn't download anything and will prompt you for where to install it.

Link to download other versions and languages of Firefox

Even when you're installing a beta, it defaults to Program Files\Mozilla Firefox so make sure you change it to something like Mozilla Firefox Beta and rename your shortcuts accordingly. When that's done, you can have both running simultaneously by ensuring your profiles.ini is set to always show the profile manager on startup (or you can set this as a one-off by running firefox -profilemanager).

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